It would be easy to miss the trailhead, marked only by a small sign off Cypresswood Drive in northwest Harris County. But Jim Robertson didn't need the sign to locate this spot.

He steered his red Toyota pickup truck off the road, bumping over the curb and parking on the grassy shoulder. We walked along a smooth, wide, concrete path into a patch of dense woods, slapping away mosquitoes. Soon we veered off the trail onto ground still squishy from recent rains, heading toward a glimmer of water we could glimpse through the trees.

As we approached this flood detention pond, I saw a profusion of birds soaring over it or foraging for food in its shallows. Egrets, blue herons, ducks - a little avian sanctuary in the midst of suburban subdivisions and roads thrumming with traffic.

This pond and surrounding woods are on Harris County Flood Control District land, protected from development, Robertson explained. But other tracts with the same potential for recreational amenities and wildlife habitat remain vulnerable as Robertson and others struggle to cobble together a public park and trail system along a 40-mile stretch of Cypress Creek from the Waller County line to its confluence with Spring Creek.

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The Cypress Creek Greenway Project began in 1999; Robertson, a retired oil and gas geologist, got involved in 2004. The effort involves county agencies, the nonprofit Cypress Creek Flood Control Coalition, and some 60 municipal utility districts serving neighborhoods in the creek's watershed.

Robertson and his colleagues apply for grants, keep their eyes out for property coming on the market and try to persuade commercial developers that a trail system would provide valuable connections between their projects and potential customers in adjacent neighborhoods.

"I'm not anti-development," says Robertson, the chairman of the greenway project. "It's about balance."

The beauty of efforts like the Cypress Creek initiative, or the city's Bayou Greenways project, is that they simultaneously meet two pressing needs in the region: flood control and outdoor recreational amenities. Land that's protected from development can continue to absorb water, and the trails and other facilities built in these areas are designed to be cleaned up and re-used after floodwaters subside.

Many of the spots Robertson showed me along Cypress Creek were underwater during the floods in April and May. The lake in Cypress Creek Park rose so high on April 18 that it covered the trail and the parking lot and almost reached Eldridge Parkway. When we visited this week, people were running and biking again on the trail bordering the lake.

Compared to their counterparts in Houston, Robertson and his colleagues are working at a significant disadvantage. The $100 million in bond funds authorized by voters in 2012 for the Bayou Greenways initiative is limited to waterways within the city. The funds were part of a $166 million city parks bond proposal.

Leaders of the Cypress Creek effort have found other funding sources, however. Houston Endowment Inc., for example, provided a grant to obtain land for the Hundred-Acre Wood preserve, a county park at Jones Road and Texas 249 that opened in 2013. It includes nearly two miles of trails through forested terrain.

But the effort faces serious challenges. A similar project on Spring Creek got started sooner, and "got out ahead of development," Robertson says. Its leaders have made significant progress toward their goal of preserving and connecting up to 12,000 forested acres. But much of the Cypress Creek watershed east of U.S. 290 is already developed.

Preserving the remaining undeveloped tracts can be difficult. The flood control district has had discussions with the owner of a large, wooded tract on the creek, Robertson says, but the district can't offer the price the owner wants. It's tough for a government agency to compete with private investors in a rapidly growing area.

"This is the kind of place we would like to see preserved," Robertson said as we walked through the woods. "But (the owner) has visions of selling it for development."

It would be reasonable to wonder why anyone would want to develop land that's repeatedly inundated by floods, but people have surprisingly short memories. The government agencies and nonprofits working on initiatives like the one on Cypress Creek deserve all the tools and resources available to protect flood-prone land from development while enabling humans and other creatures to enjoy it in its natural state. That's what Jim Robertson calls balance.